The Fall
by lone wolf legendary
Summary: Over the course of the Fall of Reach, billions died to the Covenant, but some managed to survive. This is the story of one such group of survivors who after escaping reach, find themselves crash landed on a planet where the greatest threat to humanity is not the Covenant... but Titans. How will the adapt and who can they trust.
1. Prologue: The Fall of Reach

**Author's Notes:**

**Hello Everyone! I've been visiting this website now for about four years now, so I finally decided to give back to this website by writing a story myself. Hope you all enjoy!**

**Note: I do not own Halo nor Shingeki no Kyojin.**

* * *

Prologue

[Recorded date /2552]

It had been two weeks since the departure of the Pillar of Autumn's from Reach, and with it, Noble Six's final mission was completed... but still he fought. The words of his fallen brethren still etched into his mind "_Make it count."_ He owed it to Noble. He would fight to his last breath, and bring as many of these bastards with him as he could. To his credit he had already sent thousands to their grave including an armor division that seemed to have been specifically sent to deal with this lone Spartan, but these achievements meant nothing. For as long as there was no escape from Reach, all he could do was look forward and determine the best course of action to maximize damage to the Covenant forces that still occupied Reach before Death's embrace finally caught up to Six and forced him to the world after... to fight again.

* * *

[Recorded date /2552]

This was it, death had finally found him.

In his exhaustion, Six had fallen into this final Covenant trap. They had tapped into Reach's personal UNSC emergency encryption and had fooled many a survivor to Rally Point Zulu. The location was a death trap, little cover outside of a few UNSC field buildings, and the body's of fallen soldiers and Spartans alike laid askew everywhere; an account to this fact.

Six himself had already been fighting for hours pushing back wave after wave of Covenant forces out of Rally Point Zulu, but the damage was done. He was trapped with no options for exfiltration, dwindling ammo, and mounting damage to his armor. The Spartan, wounded and cornered, now was truly the lone wolf; ready to die clawing and biting his way into the life after.

Finally after pushing back a group of high ranking Elites. The Spartan stumbled, and upon catching himself on the ground, coughed up a chunk of flesh blood on the inside of his visor. In this moment, Six realized just how damaged his visor had become, with three large cracks now overtaking most of the visor and the new coat of blood hazing most of his vision beyond the helmet. If anything this was a testament to the tenacity of the fight that had taken place in the last few hours...

But the Spartan quickly pushed that thought aside. The helmet was near worthless at this moment and thus had to be removed. So, slowly, with muscles screaming in protest, the Spartan raised his hands to the release clamps and with the unmistakable sound of the snap-hiss removed his worn helmet. Quickly placing it down to his side, he moved to pick up his MA37 assault rifle and stumbling back to his feet, he began the fight anew. Knowing full well that _this_ would be it; no more breaks. If he had to, he would push into them until he breathed no more.

To his surprise the next fifteen seconds where a blur to the Spartan-no doubt a byproduct of blood loss, hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. But he could recall that he had gunned down four of the seven Elites that had cornered him: two were gunned down by his rifle, another by his standard issue M6G side arm, and the fourth was cut through with his knife before being having its life ended by a pistol shot to the brain. The entire time, plasma bolts splashed around him, scorching the ground and turning the sand into molten glass. Several direct hits fried his shield and nearly melted through a shoulder plate. Blood seeped from cuts in his armor, creating a trail of crimson on the ground, from where he moved.

But Six didn't feel any pain. in those fifteen seconds he had detached himself from his body-becoming death itself as it would seem- watching the last moments of _Noble Six's last stand_.

As the surviving Elites moved in for the kill, one of the three pushed Six to the ground bringing Six back to his body. Six couldn't help but let out a sad smile as he batted away an Elite to his side and kicked off a silver Elite who was trying to end this fight. Even if they killed him they would also die with him. For after the package was delivered to the Autumn, he had rigged his armor-as a failsafe-to overload after his neural interface stopped receiving data from his brain. In essence, when he died, his armor would detonate severally damaging or killing anything within a twelve foot radius of his body.

Finally, after the silver Elite again lunging to kill the downed Spartan and missed him by a hair. The Elite to Six's right ignited his energy dagger and moved for the kill. Unlike the previous attack, there was no room for the Spartan to maneuver around this death blow, so he stared down the Elite as he waited the milliseconds for it all to end...

**'Crack'**

But it didn't.

The head of the _to be_ Spartan killer simply ceased to exist well before the sound of the weapon reached the downed Spartan. To the Spartans highly trained ears, it was unmistakably the sound of a SRS 99 Anti-Material rifle that could be heard, like distant thunder, reverberating throughout the desert wasteland.

Just as the Spartan comprehended the sound of the first shot a second **'Crack' **filled the air as the silver Elite, which was all too eager to kill the Spartan, had its head removed. The final Elite, recognizing that there was a new foe, Roared a defiant battle cry as it momentarily forgot about the downed Spartan, to look for the new adversary. A mistake that would cost the Elite dearly, as Noble Six summoned up the last of his strength to grab one of the plasma Swords from the dead Elites and rushing to his feet dove the plasma blade deeply into the sole surviving Elites chest as the Spartan landed with the full weight of the MJOLINR armor on the Elite. And with the emendate threat dealt with, the Spartan stood up and surveyed the landscape.

One, no, two beams of light could barely be seen in the distance. _Two Snipers, _the Spartan surmised, but was quickly distracted away from as he heard the unmistakable sound of a warthog. _It's been far to long since I've heard a friendly vehicle._ The Spartan thought as he gathered up what he could from the battle field, all the while watching the approaching warthog to make sure it really existed.

In all, by the time the warthog stopped in front of him, he had gathered up three energy swords, his pistols, his rifle, his damaged helmet, and over two dozen plasma grenades. Even though his helmet was irreparably damaged it still housed a fragment of Noble Teams AI, "Dot," which under a cacophony of situations could be essential to the Spartans continued survival.

"Need a ride Spartan?" The ODST in the driver's seat called as the warthog screeched to a stop.

The Spartan only nodded as he quickly moved towards the warthog, gave a brief glance to the other occupant of the warthog. Another ODST by the unmistakable black armor, who was keeping the warthogs gun to the sky as she slowly angled the gun left and right watching for any Covenant air support. As Noble Six climbed his way into the warthog, the driver had already put the warthog into motion, and soon the vehicle was screaming down the barren wasteland that once was Reach.

Almost immediately after getting the warthog back up to a breakneck speed the driver began talking to the Spartan. "It was lucky that we found you when we did, Spartan. A few more minutes and you would have been fighting the war on the other side." He paused for a second to glance at the Spartan, "I guess that makes us even, then. After all, you did save me and my Squad back in New Alexandria when the fighting got the thickest.. I wish I could say that their still in the fight, though..." The ODST shook himself out of his memories before continuing.

"Right, I'm Captain Ian Schmitt of the 10th Shock Trooper Battalion, Bullfrog squad. Back there," Captain Schmitt pointed behind himself, "is Lance Corporal Ellysia Langnar, lone survivor of the 19th Shock Trooper Battalion stationed in this sector. In all, we're the last Shock Troopers active in this sector, _hell_, we're probably the last active members on this _continent_." Schmitt took a moment to regain his composure with a deep breath before continuing, "By now you've already put together the fact that we aren't the two that pulled the trigger on those two Elites that almost ended you. The ones who did, your guardian angels, would be Corporal Miranda Stacker and Private First Class Liam Schultz of Hades Corps. They're not in visible range for all of our safety..."

Six understood why, it was a common practice for survivors, since the Covenant war went into full steam for survivors to stay barely in radio range to minimize the chances that everyone in the group would be found if a Covenant patrol where to stumble upon one of the vehicles in the survivors group. This would allow that found group to become sacrificial lambs to spare other survivor's in the larger group by leading the Covenant patrol and subsequent troops away from the convoy of survivors and their destination.

"Now besides those two, there is a third vehicle in our group containing an ONI Operative, I believe he codename was _Foresight,_ and a turncoat Insurrectionist named Benjamin Galik. As you can probably imagine our ONI Operative has become the impromptu leader of our rag-tag group of survivors. No surprises there."

Feeling that the Captain might fall into a tangent Noble Six took that moment to ask a question that had been burning the back of his mind since the Captain had set the warthog barreling down the landscape. "Where are we heading?"

The Captain was quick to answer that question, "A farmhouse." He then took a moment give the Spartan an expression the just seethed the sentence, _I don't believe what I'm about to tell you_, "Our insurrectionist friend believes that there is _still_ a 'lifted' civilian vassal beneath the farmhouse. Something I doubt..."

"Think _positively _Captain, it's either there or its not, and if it's not, then we go out in a blaze of glory then," suggested Corporal Langnar, who finally decided to joined the conversation.

To this suggestion the Captain sighed, "It's best to expect the realistic, that why we won't be heartbroken when it's not there." Deciding to concede a bit to the Corporal, to end this conversation, he added "I'm not saying it won't be there, I'm just saying... I'll believe it when I see it."

And at that exact moment, a Banshee appeared lazily moving outside of an Ionized gas storm in the distance. Ending the conversation where it stood, as all individuals in the warthog tensed at the possibility of being found in the open. For a few tense minutes the Banshee drifted just within visibility of the warthog before lazily flying into another Ion cloud leading away from the warthog's destination. In the clear for the moment all members of the warthog breathed a sigh of relief, having just dodged a bullet, but this would not be the last time they would run into a patrol before reaching their destination.

* * *

Three Hours Later...

"So this is the farm," Captain Schmitt stated as he brought the warthog to a stop next to the other two warthog that the group were using. As the Spartan got out of the warthog and made his way towards the farmhouses' entrance where the marines were gathering around the ONI operative and paramilitary civilian. The Spartan took a moment to take in the surroundings. The farm, which no doubt was prosperous over two months ago, wasn't much to look at anymore. The foliage around the farmhouse was long dead and it appeared that a small scale firefight had taken place on the premises in the past few weeks...

As the Spartan approached the group he heard the tail end of Operative _Foresight's_ instructions "...Corporal Langnar, Corporal Stacker, and Private Schultz stay in your respective warthogs and be prepared to move them into the hanger as soon as Benjamin here opens the door. As for Captain Schmitt, Spartan B312, Benjamin Galik, and myself, we will be going into the house. If we meet any resistance it is to be dealt with, with lethal force. After that, Benjamin will hit the switch located within the house and we all regroup inside the hanger bay. Is that understood?" After a chorus of yes sir's, the groups departed and began performing their assigned tasks.

Within minutes the house was secured, and Benjamin began looking along a discreet wall for the switch that would lead to their miracle ride off of Reach.

"Wow, umm.. Sir, you're going to want to check this out!" Captain Schmitt yelled from a storage room.

"This better be pretty damn important," Operative _Foresight_ announced as he and the rest of the house group entered the storage room. Almost immediately everyone understand why this warranted such a quick response. "That's.. That's _Spartan_ armor. How did _that_ get here?" _Foresight_ turned to the only living Insurrectionist for answers.

"I honestly have no idea. Thomson never explained how he got the 'hotter' contraband that he did... and I'm afraid he took those answers to the grave." With that Benjamin pointed towards a body laying besides a window. On a closer inspection, you could see that Thomson had put up quite a fight before taking a plasma round to his head, resulting in a nice fist sized hole in his head that had oozed and solidified across the rest of his face and upper body.

"Damn," was the only muttered response to the sight of the body before everyone went back to business.

"Spartan, grab that gear. You'll probably need it. Not to mention it doesn't feel right to leave it here, in enemy territory." commanded the ONI Operative as he moved back to supervising Benjamin, as he searched for the switch. As the Spartan gathered up the boxes of contraband gear, he noticed something truly peculiar. This.. This was his spare gear to be used during Saber Program testing... _How did it get here_?

**'Hiss'**

"That was it." Stated Benjamin as he moved away from a consoled panel, ripping the Spartan from his thoughts. "We only have two minutes to get in the hanger before the doors automatically reset." And with that, the group quickly left the house and entered the recently exposed tunnel to the smugglers hanger bay.

Upon entering the hanger bay Noble Six could hear Captain Schmitt whispering, "Well I'll be damned, it does exist." When he spotted the civilian vessel in the cramped underground hanger. As the group walked into the hanger bay, Benjamin stretched his arms out. "The _Mary Celeste.._. It may not look like much but, god willing, it's our ticket out of here."

The Spartan like the rest of the survivors, took a moment to take in all the details of the vessel. To be honest it wasn't a pretty sight. The ship, which was a relatively new modal, had been 'upgraded' by the insurrectionists to contain three gun mounts on the top of the vessel and two on the bottom. Even for the Spartans well trained eye it was difficult to tell exactly what model of anti-ship weapons these guns where, since it was obvious that these guns were constructed out of various scrap and stolen gun parts. The Spartan himself had seen multiple makeshift gunboats that Insurrectionist had attempted to use over his short career, but this by far was the worst constructed one he had seen to date, which explained why it was still in the hanger. This group of insurrectionist where beyond green and outside of having some good thief's, they had no idea what to do when it came down to an actual firefight..._but Benjamin was still alive, so either he was the brains of this operation or he was one lucky son-of-a-bitch_.If the craftsmanship on the guns where any measure of how the ship was taken care of, it would be a miracle, all over again, if this vessel was actually space worthy.

A thought echoed by Operative _Foresight_. "Damn, you did one hell of a number on this one, but can it fly?"

Benjamin was quick to replay to that question, though in a less than ideal manor, as he worked his way around the warthog lineup that was ascending into the ship's cargo hold. "It can fly. It might not be pretty, but it can fly." He paused as he reached the mouth of the ship and stated bluntly. "I'll be honest, this ship was designed to get away from you guys. If you where to ever find out about our operation, this was our escape plan. Obviously we hadn't finished working on the vessel, but that's the hand we're all dealt. We may not be able to take any punches but the ships fast, and those guns _do_ work. They were installed to keep a few Pelicans at bay, I'm sure it can do the same to any covenant patrols in the area... at least until we can jump into Slipspace." With that Benjamin led the group to the bridge of the ship, where they would discuss their exit strategy.

* * *

Forty minutes later...

After some deliberation and a quick final check the seven survivors where ready to finally leave Reach. The Spartan was voted to be the ships pilot do to his extensive knowledge of spaceflight to do his Spartan training and the Saber Program. Corporal Stacker and Private Schultz where given the tasks of navigations and communications respectively. Specifically Private Schultz was to watch for covenant air support and relay that information to the other six survivors, four of which were operating different weapons on the ship with the assistance of the Dot fragment from Six's helmet.

"We'll only get one chance at this... Is everyone ready?" To the Spartan it almost sounded like the Operative _Foresight_ was having second thought on this operation, but when no one voiced any concerns he gave Six the OK to start the assent. Muttering to himself an old idiom "We'll make it on a wing and a prayer."

Within moments the farm above the hanger bay divided like the Red Sea, allowing the ship, the _Mary Celeste_, to rise from the grave as it would have appeared and take flight on an exit vector from Reach. It would be five minutes for the Slipspace drive to worm up for use and until that time, they'd have to play a deadly game of cat and mouse with the Covenant.

The first minute when by without a hitch, but within fifteen seconds of that a Banshee had noticed the vessel on radar and was making its way to intercept the ship. A mistake for the Elite pilot. Not expecting the civilian vessel to be armed with anti-ship cannons the Banshee was destroyed before it had the chance to let off its own projectiles against the civilian vessel.

It wasn't until there was less than a minute on the Slipspace drives timer did the _Mary Celeste_ meet any true resistance, in the form of a Seraph squadron. Now the Spartan had push the vessel to its limits to keep the Seraphs from narrowing in on a kill shot, all the while having to listen to the timer slowly ticking down until they could escape. Even with all the makeshift firepower on the vessel, they weren't having any luck punching a hole through any of the Seraphs' shields, putting that much more pressure on the Spartan and the _Mary Celeste_ to avoid Seraph shots.

15 seconds... The engines of the _Mary Celeste_ where well into the red zone and would soon shutdown permanently if the Spartan wouldn't lay off of the thrusters, but as seven plasma rounds landed glancing blows on the vessel, that wasn't going to happen.

10 Seconds... Warning siren went off indicating that one of the vessels four engines had gone offline. A second prior to the siren going off several plasma rounds had struck that location of the ship, but it was impossible to know at that moment if the engine failed because it was struck by a plasma round or if it had simply given out the stresses the Spartan was pushing the engines... Within the span of the next ten seconds the Spartan expected to know the answer.

5 Seconds... The coordinates where locked and the Spartan was forced to stabilizing the ship for the Slipspace jump. And at the same time he did that, the battle to take down the _Mary Celeste_ changed completely. "Something's wrong. The Seraph's are backing off of us."

2 Seconds... Before anyone could respond to the Spartans comment, the answer appeared before them. A Slipspace portal, big enough for a Covenant Cruiser, began to open up. It covered the exact coordinates that the _Mary Celeste_ was going to punch a hole into Slipspace at-something that had never been done before. The ramifications of punching a hole into Slipspace where a current Slipspace portal existed had never been tested, but doing something like that _couldn't_ be good.

0 Seconds... The _Mary Celeste_ opened up her own portal, causing the larger portal, as well as theirs, to swell and change. By this time the Covenant Cruiser had only just begun to immerge from the Slipspace portal, but the change caused by opening the second portal was already having visible effects. By the time the_ Mary Celeste_ began  
entering its own portal, the Covenant Cruiser's belly, still in Slipspace prior to the second portal opening, had compacted into the front portion of the Cruiser as its body seemed to be propelled out of the portal faster than the front of the Cruiser was.

"Oh, shit." Was the monotone response of Operative _Foresight_ as the vessel entered Slipspace.

* * *

Upon Entering Slipspace...

The sounds of sirens and the groan of metal had already become common to the individuals inside the _Mary Celeste_ after the five heart racing minutes of fighting to get to Slipspace, but upon entering Slipspace, these noises where multiplied by the hundreds, as every siren and sheet of metal on the vessel seemed to go off or groan almost simultaneously. On top of that, internal power seemed to be fluctuating randomly as both the lights and consoles' began to fade, burst, or return to normal at random intervals.

Within a minute several fires had been started throughout the ship do to malfunctions and overloads. Dot quickly was able to put out most of these fires by venting the oxygen in all compartments the ship besides the bridge, but for those bridge fires everyone on the bridge who was not attempting to stabilize power or bring the ship out of Slipspace where furiously working on containing the fires.

At three minutes into this Slipspace hell, support beams where beginning to fail as the ship's hull began to peel away in several places. On the bridge, the fires had been put out and power, as unstable as it still was, was stable enough for the Spartan to get a Slipspace portal opened up, bringing the _Mary Celeste_ back into normal space.

But this Slipspace wouldn't be without its casualty. For as the _Mary Celeste_ decelerated back into normal space, several weakened support beams failed and collapsed into the ships' deck. One of which was located on the bridge of the ship...

**'Thump'**

"Anyone Hurt?"

"_Foresight_ down!"

"Dammit, he's dead.."

**_WARNING: COLLISION IMMINENT, SUGGEST IMMEDIATE COARSE CORRECTION _**

"The engines aren't starting.."

"Shit, don't tell me we left Reach only to crash and burn on another planet!?"

**-End prologue. -**

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**So, that's the prologue!**

**As a final note, I want to thank everyone who bothered to read this to completion, as well as, my two friends who-more or less-beta read for me. Thanks again DeadzManWalking and xXCOMIZARXx for all of your help.**

**Please if you are inclined, leave a review... A constructive review preferably. **

**Until next time, have a great day everyone! **


	2. Chapter 1: A Falling Mystery

**Hello Again, Everyone! This is lone wolf legendary with another chapter coming your way.**

**But before I get into it , I most certainly want to thank everyone who has read, faverated, followed, and reviewed this Story so far. Without you all ,I wouldn't be posting this chapter now. Also, thank you, SmartY, UnknownShape, Tormould, JoshMaxii, DanAbnettFan1997, and Asura94 for spending the time to review the prologue.**

**This will NOT be a Curb Stomp story.**

**Again, I do not own Halo or Shingeki no Kyojin.**

** Chapter One: A Falling Mystery.**

* * *

Date: 9/17/2552 0114 hours

UNSC Civilian Vessel _Mary Celeste_

Decaying orbit of unknown planet

The mood was tense on the bridge of the _Mary Celeste_. For a brief moment, everyone was still. The survivors stood silently, staring in disbelief at the body of the group's former, impromptu leader, Operative _Foresight_. His motionless body lay crushed under one of the ship's support beams. A pool of blood slowly grew around him. Then, as if to snap the survivors out of their trance, a voice broke over the ship's intercom.

_**WARNING: COLLISION IMMINENT, SUGGEST IMMEDIATE COARSE CORRECTION **_

And with Dots words of warning, the survivors jumped back into their present, dire situation. With Noble Six quickly noticing the ships biggest problem..

"The engines aren't starting."

To which Captain Schmitt emphatically stated, with the stress of the past few hours creeping into his voice "Shit, don't tell me we left Reach only to crash and burn on another planet!?"

It was clear to the Spartan that he would have rather went out, guns blazing on Reach, then go quietly, helplessly crashing on an unknown planet. Something the Spartan agreed with, but this realization wasn't worth reflecting on, he needed to get these engines online...

Out of the corner of Six's eyes, he could see Corporal Stacker and Private Schultz ripping apart consoles and circuit boxes in an attempt to reestablish connection and power to the ships engines. Hades Corp where notorious for only excepting highly quality engineers into their Corp, and these two were a testament to that standard. But in recognizing Stacker and Schultz' Corp had awoken another memory within the Spartan, that he again, was quick to repel as he continued to work on getting the engines to respond.

With each passing second, time become even more menacing as an impact clock counted down their few remaining seconds alive. No one dared to check the time till they would collide with the planet. All eyes remained inside the cabin. Nobody looked out of the ship's forward windows to watch the planet grow in front of them, for only death lie beyond those invisible barriers. The only thing that was reminding them of the passage of time was Dot, and her repeating message for a course correction…

But finally it was done, and the Spartan was quick to let everyone know it. "Engines 2 and 4 are back online!" He began pushing the two engines to stabilize the vessel's landing. It was too late. The _Mary Celeste_ was trapped in the planet's gravity well, and with too little power to escape it, the ship was going to crash. But, the question was, how hard?

As the engines jolted everyone within the ship, those who had not strapped themselves into a seat quickly scurried to do so. As they buckled in, they looked up to the forward windows to see something truly unexpected.

They could see what appeared to be a human build wall, but not an ordinary wall. This wall appeared to be 50 meters tall, something that took no genius to know was far too tall to serve any useful purpose. It was overkill to be used as a means to prevent flooding or to serve as a divider to keep local wildlife out. But it was also equally worthless if it was meant to prevent an invading army from attacking, since the advent of ballistic weapons and the ability of flight bypassed such methods of defense..

But that train of thought was quickly ended as _more_ sirens within the ship began to scream emergency as the wall disappeared beneath them and the detail of the ground grew quicker in front of them. The control panel began to sparkle with warning lights. With all the Spartan could muster he tried to pull the ship out of its death dive. Only partially succeeding, he attempted to maneuvered the ship in an attempt to avoid what appeared to be a city in the distance. A few more seconds would tell them all if he had succeeded.

As the ship finally hit the ground, it once again groaned and shook. The power within the bridge once again went out. But unlike the last time the ship went through this turbulence, the power seemed to have been cut to the bridge. Sirens were no longer crying for attention. A muted mercy to everyone's ears in the vessel, as a cacophony of other noises bombarded those who were still alive within the ship. Allowing for sounds of breaking glass and another, more sinister noise from being heard...

* * *

Year 850

Survey Corps, Outside Wall Rose

Two hours into the 56th Expedition

For Commander Erwin Smith of the Survey Corps, the 56th Expedition into Titan territory was going as well as anyone could have hoped. So far, the expedition had only suffered a dozen casualties with one injury and where making good progress towards the next forward base site that needed to be constructed for the eventual recapturing of Wall Maria. This forward base in particular was to be constructed a few hundred meters away from small town on the edge of an encroaching forest. No more than a two hour ride from their current position, if they didn't run into any more Titan opposition.

The sear fact that only a little over five years ago, human settlements where active in this area was a chilling reminder of just how fragile humanity's position was in these dire times of Titan encroachment. It was always gnawing at the back of Erwin's mind that if the Survey Corps fails to regain Wall Maria, it would spell the slow extinction of the human race. For as an animal will eventual die if left in an enclosed space, humanity if left enclosed in the two surviving walls would eventually die a similar painfully slow death...

These dark, brooding thoughts were interrupted when a member of the Survey Corps in his company called for his attention.

"Commander Erwin!"

Upon Erwin turning to face the soldier who called his name, the soldier turned his attention forward and upward as he pointed to a point of light in the sky. "What do you make of that?"

It took a few seconds for Erwin's eyes to fully lock on to the light, and in that time the light had appear to have grown by quite a margin. At first Erwin thought it looked like a typical asteroid falling into the planets air, but then, after a few more seconds something amazing happened.

It changed trajectory.

It was a subtle shift, only truly noticeable by the fact that the object began to glow brighter as it-as it would seem- attempted to level off with the ground. Something that it didn't seem to completely succeed at doing, as it glowed brighter and brighter, barreling closer to the ground and out of sight...

In all, less than a minute had passed since the object was first brought to his attention, and now, he knew it was something... peculiar. He couldn't shack the feeling that whatever that was, it could offer the Survey Corps and humanity at large, a better chance or even an edge against the Titans. And with what luck, the object seemed to have landed -if his guess was correct, only a fifteen minutes ride away from their next forward base.

With this in mind he called out two Squad Leaders in his entourage that he wanted to explore the site. "Levi, Hanji,"

"hmm."

"Yes, Commander Erwin?"

"When we get to the base site, have your squads ready. We're going to explore whatever it is that crashed over there." All the while Erwin never took his eyes off of the distant point where he was sure that the object had landed.

"Waa, you're going to join us Erwin?" Hanji was shocked that Erwin would want to be present for such a thing. He was always the type to stay at the Base sites, make sure the construction was done and prepared properly.

Erwin grunted a laugh before replying, "This... This is something that I think I need to see firsthand."

That seemed to persuade Hanji but, it did little to sway Levi to even want to explore this particular crash site. "Are you sure Erwin? It's probably just a rock."

Erwin didn't deny that passivity, "It might be... but I have a feeling it isn't." He was quick to add, "Now go tell your Squads to prepare. The rest of the Squads will continue this expedition as planned, so we mustn't waist time."

With that Hanji and Levi returned to their respective squads to explain to them the change in plans.

* * *

"So, Commander Erwin wants us to check that meteor's crash site? There's going to be nothing their but a crater and some space rocks at most." Stated Oruo, mimicking Levi's original thoughts about this mission.

"That might be, but Erwin himself will be joining us, as well as, Hange's squad. So, be prepared for the worst." With that Levi, maneuvered his horse away from his squad and rode back towards Erwin. No doubt in an attempt to persuade Erwin out of doing this escapade.

As Levi moved out of earshot, Petra finally asked a question that had been on her mind since she was told about this mission. "I wander what we will actually find out there?"

This, to the dismay of Oruo, "We are going to find absolut-" was all he was able to manage before he bit down on his tongue hard. Ending the conversation there, and shifting Petra's thoughts to shaming Oruo about taking while on horseback...again.

* * *

Two Hours Later...

The eighteen member group, containing Commander Erwin, Captain Levi, Hanji Zoe, and their respective squads broke off of the main contingent of Survey Corps' members to begin their mission of discovering what exactly had fallen from the sky earlier that day. From the moment that the group broke off from the main group they could see a large smoke cloud that had formed on the far side of town, marking the impact site. Unfortunately, from the group's current position it was impossible to tell what exactly had crashed.

For the next three minutes the group carefully moved across an open field towards the town and the impact site hidden behind it. During this time an odd feeling began to grow between the group, a feeling that they were being watched. It was eerie for all involved, no Titans to be seen, yet it felt like eye where watching them, waiting in the town in front of them... And then it happened.

A group of five Titans burst from the tree line over a kilometers to the left of the eighteen member group.

This was bad. There group was still around a kilometer away from the relative safety and increased maneuverability of the town, but still everyone went into action. Quickly the group split-up into their three separate squads and moved away from each other in the hope of separating the five Titans into smaller more manageable groups.

The strategy worked, for the five Titans quickly separated to follow their chosen pray. Two Titans had chosen to attack Hanji's squad, a single large ten meter class Titan was following Erwin's squad, and the final two Titans where after Levi's squad.

Each group fluidly began to work with each other to kill their groups Titan adversaries. Within thirty seconds of the Titan attack in earnest, two Titans laid dead. One had been killed by Hanji's group and the other by Levi's squad. Commander Erwin's squad was also making headway at killing its own Titan problem.

But the group of eighteen was not without its own casualties. Hanji's squad had lost one individual when he slipped on an attack, thus ending up on the ground between the Titan pair which were attacking his squad. Erwin had also lost a member to his own squad when their Titan stumbled and crushed one member of his squad who was unable to get out from underneath the Titan before it hit the ground.

However, before the groups could finish off the remaining Titans, another Titan appeared from the forest... This one was running.

"An abnormal!" someone yelled as the seven meter tall Titan rushed towards the closest humans to it. These humans happened to be Levi's squad which were no more than two hundred meters away from the forest edge.

But it was too late. By the time that soldier had noticed the abnormal Titan it was already closing into Levi's squad. Oruo and Petra had just closed in for a double slice on the remaining normal seven meter class Titan when the abnormal Titan came in view of the two Survey members. Already in the downward strike of their attack, there was no way that they could maneuver away at that moment.

As time slowed for the two Survey members, they're eyes darted for their fellow members only to realize that they were just out of range to be able to stop this new titan before it could attack them.

_They were going to die._

And then they heard it. A sound so unfamiliar, yet familiar. It sounded like a gun, but a gun that they had never heard before. Then they heard the reverberations of the sound again through the trees, the sound of distend thunder.

**'Crack'**

Then the abnormal Titan began to fall only a few meters away from the duo and with that Oruo and Petra finished their strike on the regular Titan. Which fell moments after the abnormal Titan. With their immediate threat dealt with, Petra looked to where the abnormal Titan was last standing and could see a trail blazed in the air itself, from the point where the abnormal Titan last stood to a building on the outskirts of the town... And, for a moment, she saw the flash of light off of glass, before she turned to assist the other groups in finish off the remaining Titans.

**-End Chapter 1-**

* * *

**That's the end of Chapter 1! **

**Next Chapter: Ghost Town**

**Again, I want to thank my two friends, DeadzManWalking and xXCOMIZARXx for helping me out by beta testing this chapter.**

**Additional Note: I'**

**And again, thanks everyone for reading and have a wonderful day!**

******Please if you are inclined, leave a constructive review or PM me if needed.**

* * *

**Interesting Note: From my research on the two fictions, its interesting to note that when it comes to named Characters: Shingeki no Kyojin has Character heights ranging from 4'9" to 6'3" but seem to be focused on smaller individuals, while all named non-Spartan individuals in the haloverse seem to be 5'7" or taller. This was just something I felt worth mentioning.**


	3. Chapter 2: A Ghost Town

**Hello, Lone wolf Legendary with another chapter coming at you!**

**I don't know if it felt like a long time between chapters, but it did to me. So, I've decided that around twice a week I'll leave an update on my profile to tell you all how the next chapter's coming along. I'll be honest most of the wait between chapters has been due to waiting for DeadzManWalking to finish Beta-ing my chapters. Which reminds me, I went back and revised the first two Chapters. Just cleaned things up a bit better.**

**Again I want to thank everyone who has read this story and/or favorited, followed, and reviewed the Chapters. Without you all I wouldn't be doing this. So thanks, Tormount, Trix17, RGM-96S, emma, Icesquall, and Annnooonnn for your reviews. And specifically, I want to thank Tormount and Annnoonnn for leaving detailed analysis' of my last chapter. In later chapters I might start to respond to these in the Author notes but... Its still a bit early in the story to do that. **

**Revised note: ODST Sergeant Schmitt, due to popular demand is now ODST Captain Schmitt.**

**So, without further ****adieu,**

******Chapter 2: A Ghost Town**

* * *

Unknown Planet

Crash site of UNSC Civilian Vessel _Mary Celeste_

The area of the crash site was pierced by a deadly silent following the _Mary Celeste's_ ungraceful landing. Not a minute ago, the _Mary Celeste_ had tumbled and slide within a stone's throw of an unknown town, flinging soil, rocks, and metal plating all around before finally coming to a dead stop.

Almost immediately smoke began to billow from the ships now lifeless engines, as small fires flared to life in the wake of the ships' final resting place...

* * *

Within the _Mary Celeste, _thecondition was no better than outside. Most of the crew, save the Spartan, had passing out during the crash. For Captain Schmitt, during this time he was thrown back into a memory from his first days in training.

_He was back in basic, running with the men and women that he would eventually call friends... Each face a dark reminder of who he had lost. Some had died during the Siege of Paris IV, others during massacre of New Jerusalem, but most had died with Reach..._

_As he looked from one young face to another, flashes of the soldiers' death would flash before his eyes. Even those he had not seen die, portrayed their own images of death, disfigurement, and brutality. All the while as the old ODST Cadence permeated his ears. And in the Cadence he could hear the voices of his friends singing the phrase, as well, to his surprise, his own voice..._

_'Helljumper, helljumper, where you been?'_

_'Feet first into hell and back again!'_

_'When I die-'_

Captain Schmitt woke with a start, coughing up saliva and blood that had begun to threaten his ability to breathe. He quickly shook the memory of the dead, his dream, out of his head as he began to get his bearings.

The room was dark. No doubt, in the ODST's mind, that during the crash power to the bridge had been cut to prevent any undo damage to the crew. With only the smallest amounts of light finding its way through the now dirt coated window, the Captain could just barely make out Noble Six's armor. From the Spartan's movements and position, Schmitt quickly deduced that he was alive and attempting to reestablish power to the bridge.

This brought the Captain to his next course of action. Finding out if the rest of the crew were still alive and on this side of hell.

"Is..." To his surprise, his mouth had become dry as he began to ask the question. "Is everyone alive still?" _Those memories..._ They had done a number on his conscience. Before the Fall of Reach, a question like this wouldn't have left him, so... off. But now, with Reach was gone, and everyone he knew and loved with it...

These survivors... these survivors, where all that was left of Reach and those he knew and loved. It may have been a knee jerk reaction to his dream, but _they_ were his family now. And unlike what happened to everyone on Reach, he would protect them.

Then he heard the chorus of responses,

"Yes, Sir."

"Alive, Sir."

"Ha.. haha, I'm still alive!"

But, that was it... The Spartan himself had not responded, and if his ears did not deceive him, one of the service women hadn't responded either. That didn't sit well in the Captain's gut. So, he immediately asked the Spartan the question he now dreaded the answer to, "Is something wrong Six?"

In response, the Spartan simply replied, "Lance Corporal Langnar, is dead." A tinge of sadness and anger was not completely hidden in his attempted normal voice.

_How.. unless...unless something happened to her seat. _The Captain didn't respond for a moment and then repeated the words the Spartan had said in disbelief" Corporal Langnar is dead?"

Seemingly, almost as a response, power flooded back to the bridge, as what remained of the bridge's interior lighting sparked back to life. And that's when the Sergeant and the rest of the survivors, outside of Noble Six, saw what had happened to Corporal Langnar.

Her body laid haphazardly on a terminal. From what the Sergeant could see, her helmet, which was designed to withstand large impacts, was dented inward far beyond what the Sergeant knew was required for a death blow. Her head was also lying at an awkward angle, in the wrong direction and a small stream of blood was seeped out of the crease in Langnar's helmet. Her body... Schmitt did not want to put to memory, was also, to put it lightly mangled and broken.

"Christ..." Was all he could manage before he turned to visible check the conditions of the other survivors.

Outside of a few additional bruises and cuts, the two marines, insurrectionist, and Spartan looked to be in roughly the same shape as they were before they entered the ship. And that was when the Spartan spoke up, "What are your orders, Sir?"

Such a simple question, but one that forced the Captain into a new realization. He was the highest ranking member of the survivors and would need to lead the rest.

Schmitt blinked as he formulated what needed to be done. Firstly, he needed to know the condition of the ship was, so, he turned to the two Hades Corp engineers. "Corporal Stacker, Private Schultz, I need you two to get down to the engines and make sure this ship is stable. After that, see what you can do to get this ship fully operational again, specifically, see what you can do to get weapons and communications functioning on this ship." With a "Yes, Sir." the two Marines hurried out of the _Mary Celeste's_ bridge to see what needed to be done.

Now, with that taken care of, the Captain turned to the Spartan. "Noble Six, get down to the cargo bay and gear up. You're going to do some recon on the immediate area. See if anything poses an immediate threat, if not, I want you to brief me on the condition of the ship itself. After that, see what you can gather on where we are."

The Spartan then replied to the Captain with a, "Yes, sir," before briskly making his way out of the bridge and to the cargo bay. But not before he heard the Captain tell Benjamin what their jobs would be.

"As for you and me, we're going to move and properly dispose of these two bodies."

* * *

As the Spartan made his way through the _Mary Celeste,_ he was able to see the extent of the ships damage first hand. Terminals sparked and many lights refused to work. From what he could see, nothing within the ship seemed unfixable, but it would take at least a half a year with the five man crew to get the ship fully operational again, not including what damages where done to the exterior of the vessel.

Quite quickly, after passing the two marines, one of which was working in an engine room, while the other was working on the Slipspace drive in a preemptive strike to prevent it from malfunction and drag everyone back into Slipspace, the Spartan entered the Cargo hold.

Like the rest of the ship, the cargo hold was in disarray. Crates once stacked neatly, now laid jumbled and unorganized. A few crates had even managed to find their way onto the cargo holds' pathways, while at least one of the three warthogs laid on its side on top of a few crates.

Luckily for the Spartan, his spare MJOLNIR armor, the one they had picked up from the farm, hadn't been lost in the sea of crates After around a minute the Spartan was able to pry off his partially melted shoulder plate and replaced it with an identical one. Followed quickly with Six replaced his worn broken helmet, with the pristine, hardened Pilot helmet the was within the crate.

With his quick replacements done, the Spartan began to search the various stolen cargo of the ships' hold for a SRS 99 Anti-Material Sniper rifle and ammunition for his personal weapons. In the two minutes time that it took him to find the sniper rifle and munitions, Six had gained a taste of the variety of items this group of insurrectionists had stolen.

Outside of preserved food rations, small arms and heavy munitions, the thief's ,it appeared, dabbled in stealing medical equipment and military grade prosthetics. But that was not it; this group had also seemed to have gotten its hands on a suit assembly machine, a thing that was only useful to Spartans...

But the Spartan had to shake the growing questions of, how and why these items had been stolen from his mind. There were more pressing matters at hand, namely the possibility of an indigenous species preparing to attack the occupants of the ship in their weakened state or worse... the Covenant.

After checking to make sure that his active camouflage unite was working, the Spartan readied his assault rifle and cycled the door into the new world.

* * *

It was midday on the planet, as the Spartan tactically moved from the door of the ship to the closest defensible debris mound. To a casual observer, nothing besides the opening of the ship's door and a faint shimmer of light would have been noticeable.

From the Spartan's defendable position he quickly began to scan the landscape for any signs of life. Checking streets, windows, and doors in the direction of the town, and the forest's edge and fields that dominated the rest of the immediate area. When he spotted no immediate threat, he continued to press up the debris field and into the nearest adjacent building to the crash site.

Once inside, his camouflage deactivated, and the Spartan checked the house. Once he knew the building was secure, he made his way to the upper level of the building as he opened up a direct line to the Captain.

"What's the situation outside, Six?"

The Spartan maneuvered to a hole in the house, he scanning the ship, the town, and the forest line again. "It's quite." The Spartan took a moment to look at the town as a whole, "The town we landed next to...It's human. Seems to be a ghost town."

"That's.. interesting. Can you see anything that could explain why it was abandoned?"

The Spartan looked more closely at the buildings, looking for any signs of damage or chaos that might explain the abandonment. Some buildings had collapsed, but it did not appear to have been from natural decay. Other buildings seemed to have had holes punched out of them, such as the one the Spartan was currently using to survey the town.

"It appears like a battle or a riot had taken place in the town, Sir... but," the Spartan felt the need to add that "there's no signs of bullet usage, plasma burning, or explosive's damage... whatever did this, it's something I haven't seen before."

The silence that followed that statement, spoke volumes about the curious situation that surrounded the survivors. But eventually, the Captain asked a second question about the mysterious town, "Can you estimates on how long it has been abandoned?"

The Spartan checked the roads of the town and the visible peripherals of the town. "Five maybe Seven years max. Vegetation hasn't moved into the town enough for it be more than that."

"Understood." The Captain then moved on to one of the other pressing matters, that required the Spartans eyes. "How's the condition of the ship look?"

The Spartan again scanned the vessel before returning his sight's to the forest's edge, the only area that still posed a possible threat. "The Ship's missing half a wing, extensive hull damage, engine one is gone, engine four is melted to its wing, engines two and three are dead, undercarriage guns are gone, and upper guns appear to be operable but in need of immediate repairs."

The Spartan could hear the Captain sign. "Dammit," The Spartan couldn't blame the Captain for this reaction. For, at a _minimum_, the ships' damage indicated that they would be grounded for at least five years, that would be, _if_ they had or could find all of the materials they needed to reconstruct the ship. An unlikely possibility...

The Captain then gave the Spartan a new objective, "Noble Six, see what you can gather on the people who lived in the town. Maybe it can shed some light on where we are, _hell_, maybe we'll get lucky and find out that this is a UNSC colonized planet... Otherwise, we need to figure out what type of war is going on down here, lest we be caught in the middle of it."

The logic to the Captain's orders were sound. If this wasn't a UNSC planet, they'd be at a disadvantage in negotiation with the planets power, thus any information about the people who lived on this planet would be crucial in the inevitable confrontation between them and the indigenous population. For, if their confrontation with the indigenous people's goes south... even _if_, by some stroke of luck they where centuries behind technologically, numbers and time would certainly spell the doom for the survivors of Reach.

"Yes, Sir." And with that, Six began searching house, after house, for any inkling of information about who, what, where, and why the people of this town lived _here, _in this town and on this planet_,_ and why they left.

* * *

After nearly an hour and forty minutes of searching, the Spartan had learned only a few facts about the people who had once called this town home.

Firstly, with the assistance of Dots, Six had learned from several journals and loose papers that he had found throughout the town that hadn't not destroyed by the weather. That the people of the town spoke a derivative of German and, on top of that, the last recorded year for all these documents seemed to be 845. A year that didn't match up with any possible explanation, for humanity had only been colonizing planets for under 500 years... _another curiosity_.

Secondly, several of the journals had made references to military organizations, Survey corps, Garrison, Military Police, and Titans. From what he could read, the Garrison and Military Police seemed to be involved in the security of the town, while the Titans and Survey corps where two warring factions over land expansion. Not much was written about the Titans outside of the fact that they where an external threat. When the Spartan had sent this information to the Captain, the Schmitt deduced that they were probably nothing more then another tribe or nation on this planet. Regardless, from the texts it seemed that the Survey corps were losing the fight against the Titans.

That was all the Spartan was able to collect before he was called back by Captain Schmitt. Now, Noble Six had to be tactical support for the two engineers, Corporal Stacker and Private Schultz, as they repaired the surviving three gun mounts. So, rather quickly the Spartan had made his way to the tallest building in the town, that offered a good vantage point on the ship and the surrounding area around the town.

At first, things where as uneventful as they had been since the Spartan first exited the ship. In no time, the marines had exited the ship and had finished repairing the first gun. Then during the repairs on the second gun, the Spartan noticed a faint motion at the forests edge. When the Spartan centered his rifle scope on the motion, he was met with the sight of an unnaturally large, seemingly human, nude creature.

The creature stood at five meters tall, had no sign of genitalia, and held an expression of fear and awe as it looked towards the crash site. Had the Spartan not viewed the creature through his sniper rifle, at this distance he would have thought the creature was a young Guta. And, for all it was worth, this creature was showing the intelligence of a Guta out of mating season. For, it just stood there...unmoved, just watching the ship from a distance of nearly a kilometer away.

Immediately, the Spartan opened a channel to the Captain and began to forward his live camera feed. Simple stating, "Sir, you're going to need to see this."

"What is that... is that a giant?" Was the Captain's response to seeing the _thing_ that the Spartan was scoping in on.

"I'm beginning to think that these where the Titans the journals I found earlier were talking about, Sir." Noble Six added as another two 'Titans' approached the clearing next to the first one. These ones as well, stopped exactly one kilometer away from the crash site. In the shade of the forest. Outside of some facial differences and different hair colors they were the same as the first. Even holding the same look of fear and awe as the first Titan...

"Keep an eye on them Six. If they start making hostile motions towards our position, take them down." The Captain Stated before adding "The engineers are down to the last gun. Once they're done and back in the ship, I want you to return back to the ship. We'll need to discuss what we're going to do about those _things_..."

By now, the number of Titans had grown to five, and they still seemed to refuse to get any closer than one kilometer to the crash site. Still, all holding the expression of fear and awe...

And that was when they seemed to smell something, for all at once, they turned and began moving in the direction of the clearing on the reverse side of the town to the ships crash site. Immediately the Spartan tightened his grip on the trigger before adjusted his scope to see what the Titans were after.

At first, all he could see was a dust cloud, but as his scope adjusted, he could make out individuals on horseback...

_Humans_ on horseback.

The group of rides divided into three groups at this time and the giants, no, Titans separated to attack the riders. As the fight quickly evolved before the Spartan's eyes, he witnessed some of the riders jump from their horses only to shoot wires from their waist gear and latch onto the Titans that attacked them.

The Spartan witnessed two individuals use unique swords to slice at the nape of the neck of one Titan, which seemed to kill it instantly. He then witnessed one rider fail to latch his gear onto a one of two Titans attacking his group and was subsequently torn apart and devoured by the Titans. A flashback to images of _Brutes eating civilian and military personnel_ flashed in the Spartans mind, as his grip on the rifles trigger became dangerously close to firing the weapon. "Sir, permission to engage?"

He watched as another rider was crushed by a larger Titan that had, intentionally or unintentionally, fallen on top of the rider and his horse. The Spartan then noticed another Titan, this one running, exit the forest wall, heading straight toward a group of riders who were completely unaware to its presence.

"Engage at your discursion, Spartan." And with that the Spartan pulled the trigger, with the intention of putting a bullet straight through the base of the running Titans skull, but due to the compounding effects of his fatigue, the Spartans shot missed its mark. Instead of landing squarely in the Titans brainstem, the bullet pierced straight through the nape of the Titans neck.

Regardless of this error, the running Titan fell to the ground dead and the Spartan had revealed his existence the riders. Quickly, Six began looking to see if any of the riders had discovered his exact location. First, Six scoped the group he had just helped save, and noticed that the Brunette in the group was starring directly at him. Defiant amber eyes piercing his direction, before, like the rest of her squad, she quickly rode off to finish the two remaining titans.

The Spartan, now knowing that his location was fully compromised, recognized that the riders had the situation with the Titans under control and quickly made his way down the building and towards a structure adjacent to the crash site.

Now, with his active camouflage unit readied, he would wait and see how the deliberations played out between the riders and his group of Survivors.

* * *

Year 850

Survey Corps, In root to crash site

Approximately four hours into the 56th Expedition

Since the abnormal titans sudden, unexpected death, the mood of the expedition changed dramatically. Before, the groups' mentality to this excursion had been simply been that of a side errand, but now... Now, it was something different, wholly unique to anything the Survey Corps, or humanity, had run into since the dawn of the Titans.

Initially, when the now sixteen member group, regrouped after finishing off the last titan, the group had been silent. The weight of knowing that someone unknown was out there, in the town, was watching them, weighed heavily on their minds. But then, under Erwin's orders the group continued into the town and whatever, laid behind it.

As the group entered the towns threshold, everyone was alert for small movements, anything that could give away the position of the unseen individual, who had helped during their fight. Conversations once loudly made, either stopped or where dropped to a whisper, as the group carefully edged their way through the town.

Rumors, quickly began to circulate amongst the lower members of the expedition that _'it'_ was a ghost, an alien, or a survivor that was unable to escape when Wall Maria fell. All of which sounded ludicrous given what they had seen in the last five years, but now, with this odd silence and feeling... any of those things seemed plausible.

Then, they finally hit the divide that separated the town from whatever had fallen. Initially, everyone was interested to see what had truly fallen, but when they did. They were in for a large surprise.

What laid before them, was, in the only words the Survey members could describe it, a beached metal monstrosity. The _thing_ seemed to have taken the landing badly, since the object was obviously badly damaged, but to the trained eye some of the damage didn't appear to have been caused by the fall...

However, that train of thought quickly was crushed, as the members of the Survey Corps noticed four human shaped individuals with guns ready at the Maw of the object. Looking from one individual to another, these beings were a black suit of armor, two green suits of armor that appeared to be human, and what was most certainly a human male in a variety of green foliage colored clothing.

The members of the Survey corps, stopped dead in their tracks as the weight of a potential confrontation with such an alien group of humans hung over their head. After what could have been minutes of a motionless standoff between these two opposing humanities, Erwin gave Hanji a gesture to attempt communication.

As Hanji dismounted from her horse, and slowly edged her way in front of the rest of the Survey corps members. The tension of what this initial attempt at conversation could lead to, weighed heavily on all the survey corps members... and unbeknownst to them, it weighed just as heavily on the survivors of Reach.

"Hello. My name is Hanji Joe. Nice weather we're having..." She paused, "Do you understand my language?"

**-End Chapter-**

* * *

**That's the end of Chapter 2!**

**Next chapters when we're going to see how things work out between these two groups.**

******Again, I want to thank my two friends, DeadzManWalking and xXCOMIZARXx for helping me out by beta testing this chapter.** If your wondering xXCOMIZARXx is the guy who I originally told the story to and is helps we with making the story air tight.

**And again, thanks everyone for reading and have a wonderful day!**

******Please if you are inclined, leave a constructive review or PM me if needed.**

* * *

**Interesting Note: Its interesting to note that several people in both the Halo-verse and the Shingeki no Kyojin world, enlist in their militaries for similar reasons: career advancement, better standard livings, and seeing more of the world. But their are distinct differences in the general reason to fight. For Halo, it is to slow the advance of Covenant menace, to save lives, and humanity, from a near certain doom at the hands of the Covenant. As for Shingeki no Kyojin soldiers, those ****who ****at least join the Survey Corps, seem to want to see humanity expand beyond it entrapping walls and to rid itself the Titan menace, which for the most part, is not an encroaching enemy.**

**Just something to think about.**


	4. Chapter 3: Two Humanities

**Hello, again!**

******I want to thank everyone who has read this story and/or favorited, followed, and reviewed the story so far. Without you all, this wouldn't be happening. Thanks, Tormount, Pannthour, SuperSaiyin4Vegeta, Annnooonnn, Blackburn, Spockify, Demosthenes2211, Duffman3005, and Jetsmillion for reviewing the last chapter.**

**************Annnooonnn: I am up to date on both Shingeki no Kyojin and Shingeki no Kyojin: Before the Fall. I also saw the Subaru commercial, which was interesting. **

**********************SuperSaiyin4Vegeta: Your well worded explanation for NCO's was the only reason I changed the characters rank. As for the armor, its alluded to in the prologue that that was stolen from the Sabre program launch and testing range. For your final point, I never said it was a full set of armor, just spare ****pieces.**

**********Pannthour: I agree with Hanji over Hange.**

**********Again I thank everyone who reviewed. I apologize for not responding to everyone's review but, I'm still trying to keep the other notes short for now.**

**********So here it is Chapter 3: Two **Humanities

* * *

[Unknown Date]/2552

Early Afternoon, Unknown Planet

In Confrontation with local human population outside of UNSC Civilian Vessel _Mary Celeste_

Inside Captain Schmitt's Helmet, one minute and forty-two seconds had passed since the riders had entered visible range of the UNSC survivors, and now, one of the riders had dismounted. She began, with arms in a position of harmlessness, to slowly moving her way in front of her fellow horsemen, before stopping a healthy distance away from the survivors. And said in a accented German,

"Hello. My name is Hanji Joe. Nice weather we're having..." She paused, "Do you understand my language?"

The Captain, who upon learning that a confrontation was inevitable, never expected in a million years that _that_ would be the way the deliberations would open up between their two groups. But, at the very least, it did mean that they were just as ill prepared as the Captain was for such a deliberation. The Captain was a foot soldier after all, and unlike Ship captains who would have an inkling of an idea of how to begin negotiations with a new civilization or species, the ODST Captain only had his experience of dealing with outer colonists and insurrection informants to go off of.

The Captain then responded, without lowering his weapon, "Yes, most of us understand your language." He paused, deciding to ignore the question about the weather, he continued, "Who do you represent, Hanji Joe?"

The woman gasped, and looked visibly taken aback by the fact that they, well at least Schmitt, Benjamin, and the Spartan, even though she didn't know that specifically, understood German. "I... I'm a member of the Survey Corps, and.." she gestured energetically towards the group behind her "We represent all of humanity."

"You have to be _shitting_ me." Schmitt could hear Benjamin whisper in English next to him. "Where the _hell_ did we land?"

Schmitt could only agree with Benjamin. Just where the hell _did_ the_ Mary Celeste _crash land?

Almost immediately his mind quickly sank into jaded thoughts about far-flung science fiction explanations to explain this situation.

_'Maybe_ we landed in some alternative dimension bullshit. No, no, no that's too easy, no, we landed in the far-flung future where apes, no, Titan's rule the world. Or, just _maybe_ this is some sort of alien zoo in a _twisted_ version of the Renaissance era with _Giants_...'

Whatever it was, the Captain doubted he'd get any of those answers from these people... and the Dot fragment would be useless to find answers. Even if she was a fully restored, this would be way out of her operation's matrix ability to understand...

If he ever wanted answers on _why_ this was going on, he'd need to get back to UNSC space. Just one more reason to get this ship fixed and off the planet...

That was when the women, Hanji, asked the four survivors her own questions. "Who are you people, who do you represent and why are you here? And what do you call that _thing_ behind you that you came in on?" Hanji pointed at the _Mary Celeste._

The Captain sighed, things could have been worse. "Um..." He stumbled to think of a way to explain to this woman and her company what his group of ragtag survivors were, "We're UNSC personnel." _At least most of us are... _the Captain stole a side glance at Benjamin. "To be more specific, we're citizens of the Unified Earth Government, which the UNSC is the military branch of..."

Damnit. That was not the way he wanted to put that. He could already here murmurs in their ranks about the reason military men would be sent to their planet. Now they were going to think that his group of survivors was some sort of advanced recon group to take over this planet...

The Captain bit his lip for a moment. There was no easy way to explanation why they were here... and it wasn't like he really had the ability to bluff about the survivors' situation, the condition of the ship was right _there_. So he just went into it, "Look, I'm not going to screw around with you here. We're in a rough situation..."

"From where we come from, humanity is protected by _us_, the UNSC, and we, as well as the human race, are being pushed to the verge of extinction by a conglomerate of alien species known as the Covenant. I know you may think you protect all of humanity, but humanity covers far more than just this planet." He paused, gauging the reaction of the other group to this information. Hanji seemed to be eating up these facts, and her blond haired superior, if the ODST had to guess, also seemed accepting of this information. But the rest seemed to be either confused by his confession or downright disbelieving of it.

The Captain begrudgingly continued, "The Covenant that we fight sees the human race as nothing more than a scourge on the galactic stage and want nothing more than to remove any trace of human existence. They even burn planets into _glass_ to expunge all traces of humanity." He motioned with his free hand to the survivors "We ourselves narrowly missed being _glassed_ on one of their most recently found planets." Schmitt refused to go into more detail the importance of that planet he continued. "And in our narrow escape, we ended up… here."

Now the Captain decided to play his hand on the Survey Corps. "From what we've gathered since we landed on this planet, it looks like you're in a losing war against those giants, I mean Titan's, correct?" He didn't wait for a response, since he had just devised a plan that might get his survivors off of this planet, though, in all likelihood he could probably be court-martialed for this; "I suggest a deal."

He hoped that this other group would accept it; after all, two of their members had been saved by the Captain's survivors already. "You get us supplies to fix our ship, so that we can go back to fighting to save humanity on the galactic scale... and my men and I will work with you and your group against this Titan menace. It's a win-win after all, I mean, we help you save your humanity from those abominations, and you help us get back to saving our humanity."

If they didn't accept his deal, well, he still had the Spartan and the ship guns as a backup.

* * *

Survey Corp

Outside of Crash-site

For Ervin Smith, the situation before him had shifted rather rapidly. First, his men stumble upon a group of otherworldly humans with weapons at the ready, then they start spitting information about an alien empire attempting to expunge humanity from existence, and now they were offering their own assistance on the Titan's. Of course they wanted compensation for their assistance, but, in many ways this is everything he could have hoped for. The only problem was, were they offering assistance because they were in a bad situation, or were they like some of his men were whispering, just biding their time to attack humanity...

But, Ervin had to think impartially about their offer. Even if they plotted against humanity, they could still be a useful ally against the Titans in the short-run, then, if they posed a large enough threat against humanity within the walls they could and would be dealt with. "You say, you can offer us assistance. What makes you think you would be an asset to us?"

The black armored man turned his attention to Ervin. It was still mildly disconcerting to Ervin that he couldn't see the individual face beneath the helmet and that the man hadn't bothered to formerly introduce himself. "As you saw earlier, when one of our men saved two of your soldiers' lives, our weapons are more than capable of killing one of those Titans in a single blow. And unlike your people, we can do the killing from outside of the titans reach, much less casualties if they can't reach you. But that weapon isn't the only tool at our disposal that could decimate those monsters; you've only seen a _taste_ of what we have to offer."

That statement was cryptic, but he did offer at least one reasonable point, they could fight the titans at a greater range then any in the Survey Corps. However, Ervin would still need to know more if he was going to accept this deal. "What type of materials would you need to repair your vessel?" murmurs of discontent could be heard from a few of the Survey Corp members.

"Copper, steel, and titanium, to name a few of the more necessary materials. If you don't have all the types of materials we need... we might be able to work around it. Our engineers are good at what they do. They can make it work."

Ervin again, thought about the deal. Copper and steel were possible to get and give to these people, but Titanium... it might be a bit more of a problem since Ervin had never heard of such a metal. Then again, it might just be a different name for a metal they already used. He'd need to probe the black armored man for more information on this titanium in the future, but for now, it seemed for the most part, that the Survey Corp could hold up their end of the deal if things panned out.

That was when Levi quietly offered his own opinion in the form of a question "Are you _sure_ about taking them up on their offer?"

However, before Ervin could respond to Levi, Oruo in an attempt of bravado moved to pull out his swords, as a sign of aversion to this situation, as he muttered his agreement with Levi over trusting these interlopers.

But, before Levi or Ervin could tell Oruo to sheath his swords, Oruo was violently thrown to the ground and disarmed by a distortion of light that faintly looked like a suit of blue and silver metal. Then, after a moment, the shimmer disappeared as a giant of a man in a heavy looking suit of armor revealed itself restraining Oruo.

Everyone was still, as they took in what they only thought was impossible. That _thing_ had just appeared out of thin air.

Then, the man in the black suit of armor, that seemed to be the leader of the UNSC solders, called out to the large being that was holding down Oruo, "Stand down Lieutenant, I think you made your point."

And with that, the blue giant, the Lieutenant, released Oruo as he stood up and moved towards his UNSC brethren. All the while, the rest of the Survey Corps members, besides Ervin and Hanji, held their hands hesitantly over their blades; ready to unsheathe and strike the giant if need be.

When the Lieutenant reached his UNSC brethren, the black armored individual elaborated about him. "The Lieutenant, here, is a Spartan. I begrudgingly admit; they are the best of the best where we come from. There's no other soldier you would rather want to fight besides you than a Spartan... And no greater enemy to face than that of a Spartan's wrath. If you doubted our ability to help you before, I doubt you can refute it now."

This didn't sit very well with Ervin. Yes, they proved that they had several tricks up their sleeves that would make them an invaluable asset against the Titans, but at the same time, they proved their ability to compromise the Survey Corps security... That Spartan had managed to slip behind their ranks undetected until he needed to strike at one of his subordinates, what would have stopped him from doing that to an individual of power in the Survey Corps, or if they were brought into the walls a government representative or the king.

But the Spartan hadn't attacked him, nor did he injure Oruo when he made an aggressive move near the Spartans men. All he did was disarm Oruo and return to his rank when called...

"Commander!" A member of Ervin's squad called for his attention. As Ervin turned to see what required his attention he was subsequently redirected by the soldiers hand to look at the sky behind him.

A red flare could be seen in the distance behind the town.

That was not good. Red flares were only used when something went wrong or could go very wrong, very soon. He needed to get back to the rest of the Survey Corp... But this situation was also extremely pressing. If he didn't forge this alliance now, then it might never happen. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity for humanity, but would the potential rewards for working together be enough to outweigh any potential consequences...

It was a gamble either way.

Ervin returned his gaze back to the black armored soldier, who now had his gun resting in a much less aggressive stance. "If we agree to your terms, how long would it take you and your men to be ready for action?"

Without a pause the armored being replied, "We can be combat ready in twenty minutes… _if_ our terms are agreed upon." It seemed that a red flare was a universal sign, for Ervin was almost positive the armored being understood the position Ervin now found himself in.

Ervin blinked. He was out of time, and would need to take a blind leap of faith on this one. What could be gained from using these people was _far_ too great to just throw aside out of suspicion. They would need to be watched closely, but the deal would be struck.

"We agree to your terms. We will assist you in gaining the materials necessary to rebuild your vessel in exchange for your service in assisting us to protect humanity against the Titan threat."

"Then we have a deal." The armored individual lowered his weapon even more.

"Yes." Ervin could hear Levi sigh in disagreement to the deal, but there was no real choice. What could be gained was far greater than what could be lost. If things didn't change against the Titans, humanity would be lost regardless. "We will need your men to be readied as quickly as possible, for a threat has arisen." He turned to see the flare still in the sky behind him. "I will be leaving a squad to lead you back to our camp, but the rest of us need to leave now."

The armored individual didn't seem surprised by this statement. "Understood, but..." he fished in a pocket of his armor and took out a silver piece of metal. "Take this," he tossed it at the feet of Ervin's horse, "it a tracking beacon. If we get separated from your men, it will allow us to find you again."

Ervin didn't know what to make of this object, but regardless, as a sign of good faith he passed it to a member of his squad that would be returning to the main Survey Corp group with him and called to Levi. "Levi, your squad will be staying to supervise and escort these UNSC people." He then dropped his voice down to a whisper in hopes of preventing the other group from hearing. "Keep a close eye on the Spartan, and if they appear to be a threat, do what is necessary."

Levi never took his eyes off of the other group, and specifically the Spartan, as he replied "Understood, Commander."

With that Ervin made ready to leave with the rest of the expedition force save for Levi's squad when Hanji made herself known.

"Ervin, you must allow me to stay. Just _think_ of what I can _learn_ about these people if I can watch them prepare for battle against the Titans!" Ever since that Spartan had made itself know, Hanji had went from quite interested in learning about these UNSC people to itching to pull apart and learn every last detail about them, and specifically _that_ Spartan. She was shaking and practically salivating as she pleaded to Ervin and sporadically stole glances at the giant individual.

Rather than argue with Hanji at a time like this, Ervin agreed that she could stay, but her squad would be leaving with Ervin.

With that taken care of, Ervin and the nine other Survey Corp members left to assist the greater Survey force with whatever issue it found itself in...

As Ervin turned to look upon the crash site one last time before moving out of visual range he noticed something new. Three objects on the crashed vessel seemed to have been orienting themselves to keep Ervin's group in its sights..._Huh, just how many tricks do they have up their sleeves._

* * *

As Noble Six listened to what he had every right to believe where the leaders of the Survey Corps discuss the UNSC personnel and how they were to be put down if they caused trouble. Six couldn't help but feel that this thought was mutual. If they attempted to harm him or anyone else that survived Reach, they would die at his hands. But this brought about another thought. Just, why did this situation go down the way it did.

As Commander Ervin, who's name and rank was exposed thanks to his helmets ability to amplify quite noise from a relatively large area, left with some of his men in the direction of the Red flare. Benjamin turned to the Captain and in English spoke his mind.

"Well, that could have gone a _hell_ of a lot better. Now we're at the mercy of _these_ people..." he paused before continuing, "How do we even know they'll keep up their end of the bargain?"

The Captain, sizing up the remaining Survey Corps members, replied "We don't."

"Great."

"I don't like it anymore then you do, but we don't really have a choice. I mean, it doesn't look like we can negotiate to those Titans, and to be honest, I don't know how long we can last against those things before they either overwhelm us, or more likely, we run out of ammo..." The Captain paused, to take a glance at the people and the Spartan under his command. "This is our best bet to get this ship operational and resources to restock on ammo... Besides, if worst comes to worst, we all know how to kill a man, those Titans on the other hand, they're still somewhat a mystery in that regard."

Benjamin, to the Spartan's trained eye, seemed to have paled ever so slightly at the Captains last sentence, sighed and conceded to the Captain. "Shit... your right, we really don't have a choice."

"What are your thoughts, Six?" The Captain decided to pull in the thoughts of the only other member of the group who could understand the deliberations with the locals.

"They're just as unhappy about the situation as us. Their leader even made a quite statement that paralleled yours, Sir. If we act out of line," the Spartan set a waypoint on Levi, "that individual has been given right to kill us. They even made a special note of killing me first."

Captain Schmitt let out a soft laugh at that. "Good luck with that. Anything else Lieutenant?"

"We should keep up our guard around them, and, as you already made a point of saying, we shouldn't trust them any more then we had too."

With that, the Captain refocused on the remaining Survey Corps members, their babysitters to say the least. Across most of their faces were looks of distrust, or, as the case of the short black haired man on a horse, a look of absolute boredom. However, that Hanji woman was practically drooling and jumping with joy as she looked at the UNSC weapons, vessel, and Spartan from a distance. She practically had the words 'ONI Scientist' plastered in glowing, bold red lettering across her face. _Note to self, don't let her get anywhere near the ship, gear... or Spartan._

The Captain sighed. "Six, you keep an eye on our guests while I explain our situation to those two." With that the Captain turned to the two marines that didn't understand German and began to explain the agreement with them, as he and the rest of the group moved to the back of the ship and the loading bay.

As the Spartan turned to give his full attention to the Survey Corps members he couldn't help but feel that this day, like so many others in the last few weeks since Reach fell, was going to last far longer than anyone would have ever wanted.

_It wouldn't be a Noble mission if it were easy. _

That voice...It was Carter's voice... Six shook his head ever so slightly, Carter was right then, and he is still right now. A Noble mission would never be an easy mission. Six would have to fortify himself, mind and body, for the next day, week, or year that it took for this mission to be accomplished and the survivors safely brought back home.

**-End Chapter-**

* * *

**That's the end of chapter 3!**

**Hope you enjoyed it, since it was the hardest chapter for me to write so far. Next chapter we see how this shaky allience works pans out between the two groups.**

**********Again, I want to thank my two friends, DeadzManWalking and xXCOMIZARXx for helping me out by beta testing this chapter.**

**And again, thanks everyone for reading and have a wonderful day!**

**Please if you are inclined, leave a constructive review or PM me if needed.**

* * *

**Interesting Note: Its interesting how both universes use the concept of overcoming individual humanity to save humanity to save humanity at large but how both universes use this concept differently. For ****************Shingeki no Kyojin their is an emphasis on forgoing your humanity to save humanity, while in Halo their is a underlying emphasis on the need to be human, if only a little bit. There are several examples of this in Halo's external fiction, and Halo Legends, but this all culminates in Lasky's response to Master Chief at the end of Halo 4. ****Lasky:"You say that like soldiers and humanity are two different things. Soldiers aren't machines. We're just people."**


	5. Chapter 4: Preparations for the Unknown

**Hello Again!**

**Lone wolf legendary is back with another chapter for you all!**

**********Once again, I want to thank everyone who has read this story and/or favorited, followed, and reviewed the story so far. Without you all, this wouldn't be happening. Thanks, aznxa21, JoshMazii, theunders, SuperSaiyajin4Vegeta, cj1of4, Imc9389, Demosthenes2211, and Spockify for reviewing the last chapter!**

**********theunders: Thank you! Your comment made my day.**

**********SuperSaiyajin4Vegeta: I will contact you if I have any future questions but feel free to PM me.**

**********cj1of4: As in cannon, Six is the only lucky one in the group. As for the rest of your comment, you'll just have to keep reading to find out. ;)**

**********Demosthenes2211: Thank you for noticing. I was trying my absolute hardest to make the contact sound as relatively realistic as possible, not irrationally trusting or antagonistic. I also agree with you on the info dumps and as for your final question I hope this chapter answers it nicely for you.**

**Spockify: Well, here it is. To be honest, college is taking a lot of time from me that I would be using for writing... So I am sorry for the wait.**

**************So here it is Chapter 4: Preparations for the Unknown **

* * *

Afternoon, Unknown Planet

UNSC Civilian Vessel _Mary Celeste_

Preparing for departure with local population, referred to as Survey Corps.

"With all due respect Sir, what the hell! There's _no way_ we can be prepared to move out in 20 minutes."

Corporal Stacker, was to say the least, frantic after hearing about Captain Schmitt's agreement with the locals. She even was gesturing franticly at the vessel and the only other Hades Corp engineer as she continued. "Sir, without proper, _correct_, materials there's no way Private Liam and me are going to get this vessel airborne again. Not to mention we're only _two_ people, even _if_ they gave us the right materials, it's going to take the two of us _years_ to get this ship airtight and ready for space."

With patients waning Captain Schmitt held up his hand to quiet Corporal Stacker long enough so that he could speak. "I understand, but this is a move in the right direction. Any materials _they_ can bring us is less time we all have to spend finding and refining the metals for use on the ship."

Schmitt paused for a moment, collecting himself for what he expected would cause another tirade from either Private Liam or Corporal Stacker, "Now, grab whatever engineering gear you deem necessary and prepare for departure. We don't know how long this excursion into their lands is going to be; so be prepared for the long term... Lord knows when the next time we will be back in the _Mary Celeste_." He could hear both Marines were preparing to argue with this order and with that the Captains façade of collectiveness broke. He moved aggressively close to the two marines before spitting out the finality of his orders. "This is _not_ negotiable! You _will_ gather your gear and be ready in 20 minutes! We are not just going to _sit here_ with our_ thumbs _up our collective_ asses as we wait_ for a _fucking_ rescue vessel to just appear out of the middle of _fucking_ nowhere, while more planets are allowed to fall to the Covenant!"

Schmitt then immediately sobered up when the next sentence crossed his mind. He spoke it softly to the two Marines, "With Reach gone, next to nothing lies between the Covenant and Earth... We may already be too late to be honest... but we have to keep trying. There may never be a rescue for us... and _that's_ why a fully operational _Mary Celeste_ would be essential for our survival here."

With that, Schmitt took a step back and the two Marines somberly, and quickly, moved to collect their gear and prepare for combat. Schmitt took a deep breath. Everything was moving too quickly. First they were fleeing Reach and now they find themselves trapped on this planet...

He, no, all the survivors needed some rest. They had been up for nearly twenty-five hours straight, from Reach to here. Noble Six had been up for god knows how long before they found him. Not to mention whatever sleep the survivors had gotten during the Fall of Reach was not what many refer to as quality sleep. Everyone was bound to get sloppy and easily agitated in this condition, but that was no excuse.

Schmitt shook his head once more before moving into the hanger bay himself to help pack up necessary equipment while the Spartan stood sentry at the mouth of the hanger bay to prevent the Survey Corps members from entering the ship.

* * *

Hanji was quick on the heels of the UNSC personnel as they moved towards the back of the metal beast of a vessel. Every second was a new observation about these strange new people. Obviously, not everyone in the survivor's group knew her native tongue, since the black armored being was conversing with two of the solders in green who seemed to have been unable to understand the agreement struck between the Survey Corps and their group.

After a small outburst between the man in black and the two green armored solders, Hanji had learned something potentially useful against these new individuals. _This group seems to be suffering instability... more than likely due to their current situation._

Following that, the UNSC personnel entered the maw of the vessel and began to collect and fill, what she could only describe as, a metal carriage with a weapon attached to it. As Hanji moved to enter the vessel with Levi's squad she was almost immediately stopped by the man, or she at least assumed it was a man, who had disarmed Oruo only minutes earlier.

"That's close enough." He stated with a weapon resting in the nook of his arm. Hanji almost asked what he was talking about, but she knew better. They didn't trust her or the Survey Corps, and she would have to tread carefully if she wanted to befriend them and learn all their secrets… _and_ weaknesses.

"Sorry." Hanji apologized convincingly as she, and the others, took several steps back. Upon moving to a safe distance she began to furiously record everything and anything she could see, think, understand, observe, or undermine about these new people.

Originally, Hanji had planned to start recording everything she could see in the interior of the vessel but that thought was obscured as she fully took in the large metal man before her. His pristine, faceless visor reflected a clear image of Hanji and the other members of the Survey Corps before him.

His armor, on the other hand, stood in complete contrast to his helmet, was covered in soil, dust, and a verity of blood, which appeared to be both his and others. There were also dried blue, purple, and orange liquids on his armor, but that was almost ignorable compared to everything else about this individual. His armor was dented and chipped in more places then she could possible count. In several spots, where the armor or its undersuit had been melted, burned, or cut through, streams of dried blood could clearly be traced back to the undermined areas in his armor. With each observation about this man, Hanji only had a growing list of questions to ask him.

Hanji recorded everything about the Lieutenant, she couldn't help but wonder how he was still able to function to the level that he currently was. From all she could gather from the damages and blood loss on his armor, he should have been bed ridden if not on Death's doorstep. Yet, here he was, disarming a Survey Corps member and now preparing for direct confrontation with the Titans... either this man had insane fortitude or he wasn't quite as human as he appeared...

After several more minutes of recording everything she could gather on the Spartan, Hanji refocused on the hanger bay and the work the soldiers within the ship were doing. By now, the first metal vehicle was filled with gear and the UNSC soldiers seemed to have been discussing what to do about another one of these wheeled vehicles that was flipped and partially perched on several large crates. After about twenty seconds of discussion in their native tongue, one of the soldiers in green armor and the man in green camouflage moved to either side of the Spartan, seemingly to take his place, as the Spartan turned around to assist with righting the vehicle.

At first, Hanji watched curiously, wondering what exactly the metal man was going to do, since the vehicle looked far too heavy for any one individual to move. Yet, within a course of under a minute the Spartan had positioned himself underneath the vehicle, picked it up by himself, and maneuvered it to be level with the ground, before finally flipping the vehicle right side up.

This whole action left Hanji and majority of Levi's squad slack jawed at what they had just witnessed. One individual had done what they could only assumed would have required at least four strong men to do in a fraction of the time it would have taken that team to have done it. Yet, none of the UNSC personnel seemed surprised in the slightest at the Spartans ability, for as soon as the Spartan took up his post at the entrance between the Survey Corps and the ship's interior, the other two soldiers standing guard went back to work, without even breaking stride upon seeing what the Spartan had done.

_What is he? _Hanji was left pondering once again, before refocusing on recording everything the group of survivors did to prepare for their journey into Titan territory...

From what Hanji could tell, many of the items being loaded into the vehicles were metal containers of various sizes with strange markings coving their sides, presumable words associated with the other language the group spoke. Some of the smaller containers, Hanji did note, held an emblem of a red cross on a white background which stood out next to other containers the UNSC members had placed in the vehicle, she surmised that these objects must hold some greater importance then their size lead on.

It was at this time the soldier in green camouflage colored clothing noticed that Oruo and Petra were still staring intently at the Spartan. Oruo, most likely, because he had been mildly humiliated by the metal man and also because that event scared Oruo to his very bone. That a man the size of the Spartan could simply sneak up on him, and come that close to killing him, without him even standing a chance.

Petra on the other hand, seemed to be trying to peel away the helmet with her stare, trying to see who this man really was. No doubt in Hanji's mind that Petra, like herself, had realized that he was the man that killed the abnormal Titan that would have killed her and Oruo. Well, that or she was locking on to some of the weak points on the Spartans armor so that she could kill the Spartan quickly if need be and get some praise from Levi. Either way seemed just as likely a reason for her to stare intently at the Spartan.

The green camouflage colored soldier grew a smug smile on his face before yelling to Oruo and Petra "Hey! The Spartans a classy _man_, you're not going to get in his armor, by simply staring at him. You're going to need _woo_ him with a nice dinner first." To top it off the man throw in a wink and a snicker at the end of his little 'joke', having embarrassed Petra and thoroughly pissing off Oruo in the process.

Almost immediately, that mans fun came to an end as both the Spartan and the Captain turned to face the joker. His face became deadly serious after realizing that no one found his joke funny in the group and that he might have angered the Spartan in the process. Before he could say anything possible in an attempt to apologize, the soldier in black called him in a controlled yet angry voice, "Benjamin, _get back_ to work."

_Benjamin_. That reminded Hanji of a fact that everyone had overlooked during the ever-changing dialogue between the two groups, the two groups had never finished exchanging introductions.

"Umm..." Hanji waved and struggled to get the attention of the black armored soldier, "What's your name?" she finally got out when he turned see what she wanted.

The soldier responded almost automatically to the request, "Captain Ian Schmitt of the 10th Shock Trooper Battalion, Bullfrog squad." he then paused coming to the same realization as Hanji, "We never did introduce ourselves did we..." He then began to point to each individual survivor and introduce them in turn, the two soldiers in green were apparently Marines from a company called Hades Corp of engineers and the green camouflage man was not truly a soldier but a survivor of Reach whose name was Benjamin Galik. The Captain made a point to say that Benjamin's earlier outburst did not reflect any opinion of the UNSC but was that man's personal, not quite correct, attempt at lighting up the mood between the two groups.

After that, Hanji reciprocated the favor by formally introducing all of the currently visible members of the Survey Corps as well as the key players who had left to check on the situation of the main group of Survey members. Namely Commander Ervin Smith, and upon finishing these introductions the group of UNSC personnel seemed ready to leave their downed flying vessel.

* * *

_Only a few more things left to do_, Captain Schmitt thought as he began to check the two warthogs, making sure all the equipment was secured and wouldn't come loose during their journey into the unknown on this planet. After that he called to Dot.

"Dot, can you lock down the ship?"

"Negative Captain. All automated doors can be locked and sealed upon your exit but, several hull breaches do exist throughout the ship that would allow for partial intrusion."

"What rooms are breached Dot."

"The cafeteria area, custodial room, rear restroom, and observation room all contain large hull breaches."

Schmitt thought on this for a moment, "Corporal Schultz, Benjamin go to the rooms Dot has designated as breached and move all valuable items from the room." He then refocused on Dot as the two survivors entered the bowels of the ship. "Dot, if any of those Titans gets within seven hundred meters of the ship, you are to neutralize them. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Captain Schmitt."

"Alright... if they are indigenous people like the Survey Corps outside, you are to give them a warning not to approach the vessel... in German. If they continue to approach, continue to warn them to leave or else be fired upon and fire a warning shot at four hundred meters. If they persist, lethal force is authorized at three hundred meters."

"Understood, Captain Schmitt."

_Right... that's everything. _Schmitt checked his HUD clock, twenty-one minutes and counting. All he had left to do was to wait for Benjamin and Schultz to return and the group would be ready to join this planet's war... _Hurray..._ Schmitt thought in the most sarcastic voice possible.

But Schmitt needed to stay focused, and out of these cynical thoughts, so he began to recheck the warthogs once more. It was going to be one hell of a fit for anyone sitting in the side seat of the first warthog, since boxes were stacked in such a way to offer a nice tight fit for the occupant of that seat. Though, whoever it was who was going to be sitting in the side seat didn't have any option over what warthog he'd be in since the second warthog's side seat was completely packed with gear, from foot frame to overhead support beam.

Even the back of the warthogs had gear latched onto it, though it was done in such a way as to not hamper the ability of the chain gun operator... That was when Schmitt's eyes fell upon a familiar object on the ground next to the warthog.

A jetpack.

Schmitt having registered what the object was walked over to it and inspected it. It was a bit scuffed from the crash-landing but it was in working order. He then checked the fuel reserves and noted that it had a full tank. For a moment, he thought about exchanging his current jetpack for the one he just picked up, but then, upon looked at the Spartan and remembering his actions on Reach he changed his mind.

"Six," Schmitt called to grab the attention of the Spartan, "take this." And as he said that he passed the jetpack to him before adding. "For all its worth you're still an honorary Bullfrog... And for my old squad, I want to see you hopping." He added a forced smile at the end for emphasis his old squad's old joke.

The Spartan only nodded and promptly put on the jetpack as he gave a simple "Thank you" to the Captain.

Turning around once more, to take in the hanger bay, Captain Schmitt noticed that Benjamin and Schultz had returned. Schmitt took in a deep breath and nodded to himself, _it's time to go._

"Alright everyone, let's get this show on the road." He turned to Corporal Stacker and Private Liam, "You two are going to take the second warthog." He then turned to Benjamin and the Spartan "Six you take the gun," a smile crept on the Captains face "and Benjamin your sitting shotgun."

Benjamin looked like he was about to protest but then looked at the Spartan and realized it was in his best interest to suck it up, so he quietly forced his way into the side seat.

After that, the Captain and the rest the UNSC soldiers piled into their warthogs and just as the hanger bay doors shut behind them Schmitt turned to Hanji and yelled, "We're ready to move when you are."

And with that their venture to the Survey Corps field HQ began.

* * *

The trip to the Survey Corps field HQ was quite... too quiet for the survivors of Reach. Paranoia was slowly creeping into all of the survivors at the lack of any wildlife being present, even though the land was alive and green. Some birds were seen earlier on, but nothing else. To the survivors of Reach this was beginning to feel like a trap, although, Hanji's group was leading them in the direction of the tracker that the Captain gave Ervin earlier that day...

The situation wasn't improved by the lack of conversation going on between the groups. Hanji, who at first was all too eager to question the survivors had become quiet after a small argument with Levi, and now seemed content with recording all she could see and interpret about the group as they moved forward.

Then, finally, the convoy could see the peaks of the Survey Corps HQ and the survivors' paranoia declined ever so slightly.

As the group approached, Noble Six could make out the fact that the Survey Corps members were working double time to disassemble their makeshift HQ. Service men and woman were stacking crates into carts, disassembling tents, and corralling horse to prepare to move out. Something had happened, Six surmised, which seemed to required the complete redeployment of this group's whole company, immediately.

Something that reminded him ever so slightly of what happed when Winter Contingency was initiated on Reach...

When the convoy finally reached the outskirts of the camp, Ervin had already rushed over to meet them.

He didn't waste time with formalities as he dove right into the issue at hand. "Titans are moving in force from all directions towards Trost." Ervin made eye contact with Levi, "I fear the district is in danger. Wall Rose, it seems, may have already fallen." He paused, "That is why I am ordering your squad to advance back to the district immediately to assist in the defense of the town. And, if need be, help in the evacuation of the civilians if the wall has already fallen."

Before Levi could order his men to head headlong back to Trost, Ervin added, "Levi! Our new allies are to join your squad in assisting Trost." Ervin could see Levi about to question his order, so he answered the question before it was asked. "They are already prepared for battle, and they could be instrumental in saving the town. They say their willing to help, this is their proving grounds. Now Go!"

It wasn't Ervin's ideal situation for testing the UNSC personnel's loyalty, but their help was needed. It would be at least another fifteen minutes for the HQ to be disassembled and for all squads to report back in to redeployment to Trost and that was time Trost didn't have. These new people will need to prove themselves now and like this.

And with that, Levi ordered his men to move to Trost and with an acknowledging nod from Captain Schmitt who seemed to have gotten a similar feeling to Noble Six over the condition of the Survey Corps camp. Then, quite quickly the two warthogs and a squad of Survey Corps members began moving at best speed towards Trost and whatever trouble the district found itself in...

**-END CHAPTER-**

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**That's the end of chapter 4!**

**Hope you enjoyed it, and again I am sorry for the wait... until the semesters over, chapters might take this long to write.**

**********Again, I want to thank my two friends, DeadzManWalking and xXCOMIZARXx for helping me out by beta testing this chapter.**

**And again, thanks everyone for reading and have a wonderful day!**

**Please if you are inclined, leave a constructive review or PM me if needed.**


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